A talking Giraffe? : How I managed animation for George the Giraffe

Here's the primary control center for all animations that go through george. Its a simple yet robust set up with the primary goal of allowing george to play facial animations while simultaneously playing skeletal animations.

A basic explanation of the set up would be that as animations are brought into UE4 and then categorized. If the animations is a primary animation its then placed into the default slot. Examples would be: running, jumping, sliding, and walking.

Additive animations would go in the additive slot. Examples would be: Talking, tail wiggle, and blinking. In this scenario we captured some facial animation using Faceware Tech. The animations have been primarily using morph targets.

Here is the cache logic that both slots pull from. Its a set up for mainly utilizing the slide, run, and jump animation of George.

In addition to the facial animation. I simulate the ears to bounce and flow with player movement.

Here is the blueprint for our basic talking system. I hid some of the redundant content. Each line plays a corresponding additive animation. Not shown here is the system when its hooked up to a location based comment system.